Steve Rubel reports that Google has released a new iGoogle Gadget named What’s Popular. The gadget looks like a small little Digg clone to me. Here is a screen capture:

As you can see, you can mark up or down a story and it shows the number of “pops” next to the story, plus when it was first added. You can even submit your own stories and keep track of your submissions and “my pops.” If you maximize the gadget, you can further filter the stories. Here is a screen capture:

I wonder if this will catch on? We remember when AOL turned Netscape into a Digg clone and it failed. Yahoo also turned Yahoo Buzz into a Digg clone and I don’t believe it has caught on as Yahoo might have hoped.

Here is how Google describes this gadget:

The What’s Popular gadget by Google helps you discover interesting items from all over the Internet.

How we find interesting stuff What’s Popular uses algorithms to find interesting content from a combination of your submissions and trends in aggregated user activity across a variety of Google services, like YouTube and Google Reader.

Ratings You can rate items that you like or dislike by clicking the ratings buttons next to each item. If you change your mind, you can change your rating at anytime. The What’s Popular gadget looks at what users liked or disliked to improve its ranking of interesting items.

Add a URL Tell What’s Popular about interesting items you have found! If they become popular, they may rise to the top of our list! You can submit an item with or without attribution to yourself and preview your submission before you post. If you decide to associate your username with your submission you’ll be able to edit its title and description. The items you submitted can be found in the “My adds” area, where you can remove your name if you change your mind.

Terms of Service and Privacy What’s Popular is governed by the Google Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Users who repeatedly submit bad content to What’s Popular may have their rating and adding privileges temporarily suspended. Please go here for issues relating to copyright. All other violations of our terms of use can be reported through the report abuse links.

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Google: Gadgets | Search Engines: Digg | Top News

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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